Overseas investment down on last year

The sale of SkyCity Cinema Holdings for $42.3 million was one of the year's largest. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Overseas investors won approval for 68 deals involving $11 billion of expensive or sensitive New Zealand assets in the nine months to August, down on the 104 deals worth $18 billion done by this time last year.

The Overseas Investment Office must appraise foreigners' applications to buy special land or assets worth more than $100 million.

The gross value of consideration this year was $1.1 billion, resulting in a net investment of $268 million, compared with a gross $7.3 billion and a net investment of $660 million from January to August last year.

This year's three biggest deals so far are Amalgamated Holdings' acquisition of SkyCity Cinema Holdings for $42.3 million, the Saint James Company's purchase of Bolitho Vineyards (Hope), Waimea Estates (Nelson) and 69ha of Hope and Appleby land for $34.5 million and CSG's purchase of Leasing Solutions and Onesource Group for $23.2 million.

In the office's latest monthly decisions, the biggest deal where the monetary value was not suppressed was consent for The Royal Bank of Scotland Group to do a deal involving $352 million and ABN Amro.

Singaporean-controlled Olam International obtained consent to take over NZ Farming Systems Uruguay, a deal involving assets worth $317.1 million.

"The investment is part of the applicant's long-term growth strategy to expand its reach into key dairy areas of Oceania and North and South America," the office said.

Asia Pacific Healthcare Group, fully American-owned, has been allowed to do a deal with foreign-owned Healthscope for assets worth $101 million.

Healthscope operates in New Zealand providing pathology services, the office said.

American paint and coatings manufacturer/distributor The Valspar (Australia) Paint Acquisition received consent for a $33 million deal to buy Australian-controlled Wattyl.

BNZ was the vendor of an rare slice of Bay of Islands real estate at Bill Birnie's Mataka Station on the Pererua Peninsula outside Kerikeri north of Waitangi.

A 26ha block of Mataka, a coastal subdivision tightly controlled by body corporate rules, can go to Switzerland's Maurice Dabbah for $2 million.